Editor's Introduction: This is an excerpt that begins "JFK: The Real Story," a major new research report by the Truth & Reconciliation Committee, which was founded in 2019 to investigate the 1960s assassinations of President John F. Kennedy (JFK), Black civil rights leader Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., (MLK) and the president's brother, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), shown below from right to left.

The Justice Integrity Project has been active as a founding board member in supporting the committee's work, and excerpts the report with permission in order to advance public understanding of evidence and analysis that has been ignored or under-reported by the mainstream media.

Today's excerpt provides the background for the JFK Assassination in Dallas in 1963. Next, Part II, answers the key question "Who Killed JFK?"

-- Andrew Kreig, Justice Integrity Project editor

Introduction

The JFK Records Act, which was enacted by Congress in 1992, mandated that all documents relating to the JFK assassination be released within 25 years, which would have been in 2017. However, President Trump unlawfully postponed the release until October 2021, and then, as has been widely reported, President Biden postponed it—again unlawfully—until December 2022, with a partial release to occur on December 16th, 2021. In addition, documents and testimony from the 1977-1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded that there was a probable conspiracy in the JFK assassination, are being withheld from public view until 2029.

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) seeks the release of these documents from local, state and national government agencies, as well as those related to the three other major assassinations of the 1960s.

This John Fitzgerald Kennedy Report is presented by the TRC (www.americantruthnow.org), which was formed in 2019 by members of the Kennedy and King families, Daniel Ellsberg, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, David Crosby, Reverend James Lawson Jr., Oliver Stone, Adam Walinsky, James Galbraith, David Talbot, and other public figures. The TRC is dedicated to helping America confront the truth of the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and Robert F. Kennedy, all of which changed the course of American and world history and adversely affect us to this day. The subsequent cover-ups and failures to disclose critical case files have added to the public’s distrust of both the government and the media, a situation that has helped create the dysfunction in our current political environment.

Written by respected journalists and researchers, this report (which can be read in full here: JFK: The Real Story) relies on documented evidence to refute the official government story of these assassinations. As with other Truth and Reconciliation movements, our goal is not to punish the perpetrators but to set the historical record straight and thereby help bring about a new era of understanding for current and future generations.

President John F. Kennedy: His Assassination and Why it Matters

Despite a trove of new research and information emerging over the last 58 years, there are many people who still believe that the central questions—who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and why—remain unanswerable. Others cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone nut” theory proffered by the Warren Commission (shown at left presenting its report to President Lyndon Johnson in September 1964).

However, both these groups tend to agree that whatever the facts may be, the story is ancient history with little contemporary relevance, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do.

Nothing could be further from the truth, for the assassination of JFK is the foundational event of modern American history, the Pandora’s Box from which decades of tragedy have sprung.

Two major new research reports assemble evidence that challenges longstanding official accounts endorsed by major news organizations that President John F. Kennedy (JFK) and his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), were fatally shot in separate assassinations by lone gunmen, acting alone.

The separate reports announced late this month show that JFK’s 1963 death in Dallas and RFK’s 1968 death in Los Angeles were each the product of conspiracies to thwart the democratic process of elections and accountability via the criminal justice system and have resulted in long-time cover ups that continue to thwart justice and other aspects of civic life.

The reports were prepared by the non-partisan Truth & Reconciliation Committee (T&R), which was founded in January 2020. The reports are available in full on the committee’s website:

• JFK: The Real Story
• RFK: The Real Story

Also, the Justice Integrity Project, whose editor was a founding board member of the T&R Committee, will excerpt the reports, beginning with today’s column focusing on JFK: The Real Story.

The brothers at right are John at left, Robert Kennedy, center, and their younger brother, Ted Kennedy, right.

Excerpted at the bottom of this column is a news release on the RFK report that is planned for distribution on Nov. 29.

The reports each carry relevance to developments expected in the next few weeks even beyond the intense civic interest that has generated large numbers of book, films and conferences since the deaths.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, shown at left greeting President Biden in September, and the state’s full parole board must decide soon whether or not to affirm a recommendation in August by state parole board panel that RFK’s accused assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, deserves release under the state’s generally applicable policies for prisoners. Sirhan has been jailed since RFK’s shooting at the Ambassador Hotel shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968 following California's presidential primary the previous day.

Separately, Biden has announced that his administration will disclose by Dec. 15 an unspecified number of the estimated 16,000 classified records pertaining to the JFK assassination that have been withheld from the public for supposed national security reasons despite the mandate that they be released under the congressional mandate of 1992 JFK Records Collection Act that President George H.W. Bush signed into law in late 1992 under intense public pressure.

The new report assembles considerable evidence that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was a “patsy,” as he claimed to be before Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald on live national television at the Dallas police headquarters two days after JFK’s assassination on Nov. 22, 1963.

Famed forensic pathologist Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., a longtime coroner and medical school professor, describes the physical impossibility of the Warren Commission's 1964 report that President John F. Kennedy's accused assassin fatally shot the president acting alone. Author of nearly 60 books for both medical professionals and the general public, his latest released this month is The JFK Assassination Dissected: An Analysis with co-author Dawna Kaufmann. (Photo above at the National Press Club by Noel St. John via SmugMug).

Dr. Wecht, chairman of the group Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), was speaking at a March 2017 national "Sunshine Week" conference organized by CAPA to show the vital civic need for the White House to comply with the President John F. Kennedy Records Collection Act of 1992, which required public release of all assassination records. President Trump later that year cited "national security" to postpone the release of many records, a delay replicated last month by President Biden just before the required release date this year of Oct. 26. An estimated 16,000 JFK assassination records remain classified in whole or part despite the provisions of the law, which had been unanimously passed by Congress in 1992 and signed into law by then President George H.W. Bush

The Biden Administration’s recent delay in releasing the final trove of classified documents pertaining to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy tees up three annual research conferences this month during the anniversary of JFK’s slaying in downtown Dallas.

The conferences and postponed document releases build on millions of pages of previously declassified documents and many hundreds of books through the decades fanning widespread public doubts about official accounts. Those official accounts, most notably the 1964 Warren Commission report, assigned guilt for the president’s death solely to ex-Marine Lee Harvey Oswald. Flaws in the report largely ignored by government, academic and mainstream media foster lingering fears that watchdog institutions fail to probe and prevent civic tragedies and cover-ups, including in current times.

Today’s column surveys this fall’s major developments. These include the records release delay, the three conferences and Oliver Stone's sequel, JFK Revisited, to his blockbuster film JFK three decades ago. The new documentary launched in the United States on Showtime on Nov. 22, the anniversary of JFK's death. Stone is shown at right with a poster from JFK.

This month also see the publication of a major new book: Coup in Dallas: The Decisive Investigation into Who Killed JFK (Skyhorse, 720 pages) by the late H. P. Albarelli Jr. with a foreward by best-selling JFK author Dick Russell.

Another major development is the publication of a "primer" on the assassination designed to provide a relatively brief and powerful assembly of relevant evidence undercutting the Warren Report and its defenders.

The report, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy-The Real Story, is by the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, created in January 2020 by more than 60 researchers, which announced on Nov. 18 the release of its JFK report.

The committee (www.americantruthnow.org) urged everyone to share the links and encourage friends and associates to contact their Senators, Congressional representatives and President Biden to urge release the JFK records.

This editor has published a book in the field this year, worked closely with leaders in records release advocacy and also spoke at two of the three November conferences.

One was organized by Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), shown via Zoom with details here, on the weekend days of Nov. 20 and 21, with a free all-day session on Friday, Nov. 19 for students.

Another was the JFK Assassination Conference, which was seen both via Zoom and in person at the Magnolia Hotel in downtown Dallas, beginning Thursday Nov. 18.

A third conference, organized since 1996 by the JFK Lancer event and publishing company, was its November in Dallas annual event, this year via remote viewing from Nov. 19 through 21, with heavily discounted admission for students.

Our project always seeks to promote all three conferences with the view that there is much to discuss, with many valuable perspectives deserving an audience.

An appendix below contains more details on these events, as well as excerpts from a number of news stories and commentaries this fall regarding the records release process and its implications, plus analysis of several recent assassination witness revelations.

This column is also the 57th segment of the Justice Integrity Project's JFK Assassination Readers Guide, which lists major books, films, archives and interpretative articles, with an index and links in the appendix.

Shown also below is a report on the new issue of Garrison, a 398-page webzine published this month. This edition's focus is on original commentaries about the 1960s assassinations of John Kennedy (JFK), his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (RFK), the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and Malcolm X.  This editor is among the authors. 

JFK Records Chronology

A rare feature this fall regarding these inquiries was the deadline on Oct. 26 for federal authorities to release to the public all remaining documents pertaining to the JFK assassination.

On Oct. 22, the White House issued an executive order postponing the release until Dec. 15 for an unknown number of documents. The order set the same date next year, Dec. 15, 2022, to release remaining documents. The only exception under the terms of the 1992 JFK Records Act is for the Executive Branch to provide specific "national security" reasons for any documents withheld.

In ordering this latest postponement, the White House cited as an excuse the pandemic’s impact on federal staff, particularly at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The Justice Integrity Project has been working closely with active researchers, several of whom issued blunt criticisms of the delay and overall process. One of them, researcher Lawrence Schnapf, a New York City-based lawyer, promptly filed a federal Freedom of Information suit seeking prompt release of relevant documents and specific reasons (as required under the Records Act) regarding any documents that are withheld.

Researchers also criticized many in the major news media for their failure to cover the delay more prominently and for a longstanding pattern of fostering a false narrative that no remaining significant questions exist about the assassination and conventional accounts. The 1964 Warren report blamed the assassination solely on Oswald.

U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren chaired the commission, which included several other top government leaders all chosen by Kennedy's successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson. The seven commissioners and two top staff counsel are shown at left, including former CIA Director Allen Dulles, who is shown also at right.

The New York Times, Washington Post and nearly all other major newspapers and broadcast outlets consistently state that Oswald is "the assassin" of Kennedy without attributing the claim and without for the most part informing audiences of strong evidence disputing that claim that has been offered through the decades by well-credentialed experts.

Instead, the major news organizations and most widely quoted academics on the topic use the smear term "conspiracy theory" to demean those researchers who question commission's report and other highly irregular proceedings after the killing. The controversies continue to provoke worldwide interest in JFK's death.

Our appendix to this column contains a large amount of relevant material and provides a roadmap for further in-depth research.

  Introduction: The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) published this column about the late John Kelly, a co-founder and director of the Justice Integrity Project and longtime member of the OPC. The press club's membership also includes this editor.

John Kelly, below left, a longtime OPC member who combined an eventful career in broadcast network news with government service and a lifelong passion for journalism, died early this year at age 85 in Connecticut.

His career included work as a news editor and correspondent on the national staff of NBC News and CBS News. He was the last surviving reporter to have covered the 1960 Election Night victory party in Hyannis, Massachusetts of Democratic Presidential nominee John Kennedy, shown below right in a poster with Republican rival Richard Nixon.

Kelly went on to cover civil rights stories, early 1960s operations in Laos, the FBI and the Watergate scandal. In doing so, he worked with such iconic anchors as Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at NBC Nightly News and Walter Cronkite at CBS News.

In one career interlude in the late 1960s, he worked for the CIA in Indochina during the Vietnam War. He later served during the 1970s in the administration of New York Gov. Hugh Carey as deputy commissioner and director of the State Office of Taxation and Finance, where he helped to unravel and expose to Congress corruption schemes that were hurting taxpayers.

In appreciation for John’s impressive career and inspiring personal qualities, Wayne Madsen, left, and this editor collaborated last year in creating a 30-minute video homage, “Mr. Kelly Goes To Washington,” chronicling career highlights that recall the James Stewart film, with scenes from the movie shown below.

The Kelly video was viewable only privately until now. But we make the video public on YouTube for this column, particularly for OPC colleagues whom he so much admired.

We at the Justice Integrity Project are pleased to present another guest column on a timely topic by Dr. Steven Jonas, right, MD, MPH, MS, a professor emeritus of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook Medicine (NY) and author / co-author / editor / co-editor of over 35 books. He has been published also on many current affairs news sites. His own political website,stevenjonaspolitics.com, will eventually archive the close to 1,000 political columns he has published since 2004.

He was also a career triathlete (36 seasons, 256 multi-sport races), who is now retired from the sport.

His latest book is Ending the ‘Drug War’; Solving the Drug Problem: The Public Health Approach, Punto Press Publishing, (Brewster, NY, 2016). It is available on Kindle from Amazon, and also in hardcover from Amazon. In 1996, he published a ‘future history’ of the United States entitled The 15% Solution: How the Republican Religious Right Took Control of the U.S., 1981-2022: A Futuristic Novel (Third Edition published by Trepper & Katz Impact Books, Punto Press Publishing, 2013, and also available on Amazon.

By Dr. Steven Jonas

"No Mandates! No Mandates!! No Mandates!!!" This seems to be the common approach to dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic adopted by the vast bulk of the Republican Party, elected and otherwise. "It's my body. They're my children," and "And I get to decide," etc.

That is the common response emanating from the Right whether we are dealing with company- or government-mandated COVID-19 vaccination for their employees, or mandatory mask-wearing in schools and restaurants, and everything in-between,  (By the way, while I have not seen any calls from any responsible sources calling for mandatory vaccination of the population in general, the far extremes of the anti-vaxx movement, both Right and Left -- [and yes there is a small, but very vocal, left-anti-vaxx movement] -- scream about that possibility on a regular basis.)

As many of the readers of these columns know, it happens that I come to this subject from a career as a public health physician.

In that light, a couple of weeks ago my oldest son asked me if I knew of any other major pandemic in history that had been politicized the way this one has been. I replied that while I certainly had not studied the history of pandemics in any detail, I certainly did not know of any major one in which political forces had intervened to promote interventions or lack thereof that would actually end up promoting the spread of the disease. Which the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers, let's-wait-until-people-get-sick-and-then-treat-them crowd do. Although COVID-19 is a particularly challenging type of viral respiratory disease, the public health basics for dealing with it are still very straightforward: "social distancing," masking, testing-contact-tracing-isolation, and, when available, vaccination.

But what we have here -- and it started with Donald Trump -- is on the Right the politicization for electoral purposes of the responses or non-responses to it. (For example, see the first ten paragraphs or so of my recent column on this same subject, "Why Anti-Pandemic Control: from the Right" for a summary of my writings over time on that subject.)

This is all precisely what Republicans from Texas Gov. Greg Abbot to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are doing. Florida recently suffered its highest increase in number of COVID-19 deaths yet. And they intend to go beyond their own states in spreading their disease-spreading policies.

In a fund-raising letter of August 9, 2021, DeSantis, left, made this very clear, when he said: "The Left is currently doing everything they can to take [your] God-given rights away from you." (Further, on a different note, do note there that DeSantis is talking about "God-given" rights, not those that are protected by, say, the Constitution, for all Americans, believers or not.)

• Editor's Note: See below in an appendix for a daily update of pandemic news and views, beginning Sept. 1.

Sirhan B. Sirhan is shown at a California parole board hearing on Aug. 27 in San Diego a photo released by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

A California parole board voted on Friday to recommend the release of Sirhan B. Sirhan, who has served more than 50 years in prison following his 1969 conviction for murdering U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 following Kennedy's victory speech in California's Democratic presidential primary that year.

"The recommendation from the two commissioners does not necessarily mean Mr. Sirhan, 77, will walk free," the New York Times reported, "but will most likely put his fate in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat facing a recall election that will determine his political future. A spokeswoman for Mr. Newsom declined to say whether he would approve the recommendation, only that he would consider the case after it is reviewed by the parole board’s lawyers."

Kennedy is shown at right in a photo when he was U.S. attorney general in his brother John F. Kennedy's administration.

"The slaying of Kennedy (D-N.Y.), then a contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, likely changed the course of American history," reported the Washington Post's Thomas Jackman, who has followed the case closely. "But Sirhan’s lawyer argued that was an irrelevant consideration for parole — that the criteria of rehabilitation, remorse and future dangerousness applied to all prisoners should also be applied to Sirhan, now 77."

“Over half a century has passed,” Sirhan told the two parole commissioners, according to the Post report, “and that young impulsive kid I was does not exist anymore...Sen. Kennedy was the hope of the world and I injured, and I harmed all of them and it pains me to experience that, the knowledge for such a horrible deed.”

The Post further reported:

Kennedy’s family made a late decision to appear at the hearing, with son Douglas H. Kennedy speaking in favor of Sirhan’s parole. “I really do believe any prisoner who is found to be not a threat to themselves or the world should be released,” Douglas Kennedy said, according to the Associated Press. “I believe that applies to everyone, every human being, including Mr. Sirhan...I was very deeply moved by Mr. Sirhan’s expression of remorse and at times it brought tears to my eyes and affected me very deeply.”

Another son, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., sent a letter to the parole board on Friday in support of Sirhan after learning that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had sent a letter opposing parole “on behalf of the Kennedy family.”

“Please know that that letter was not at the direction of the ‘family,’ and certainly not me,” Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote. “As you may know, I have been a strong advocate for the release of Mr. Sirhan B. Sirhan since I learned of evidence that was not presented to the court during his trial.”

After the ruling, Robert Kennedy Jr. said, “My father, I think, would be really happy today. My father believed in compassion. The ideals of our justice system are the possibility of redemption and the importance of forgiveness. He didn’t believe the justice system was just about revenge.”

• New York Times, Opinion: The Man Who Murdered My Father Doesn’t Deserve Parole, Rory Kennedy
• The Guardian, Sirhan Sirhan: six Kennedy children condemn decision to grant killer parole, Martin Pengelly, Aug. 28, 2021. Two children of assassinated Senator Robert F Kennedy support California decision, which may be reversed.
• Details below.
  

Sirhan's lead attorney for the parole hearing was Angela Berry of Encino, Calfornia. She has been working also with Dr. William F. Pepper of New York, who became Sirhan's lead attorney in 2008 after becoming convinced that he did not fire any bullet that fatally wounded Kennedy, a friend and political ally of Pepper's beginning in 1964.

"It's been a long struggle," Pepper, left, told this editor on Friday evening in a phone interview, "but justice has finally triumphed."

The Justice Integrity Project has been working with Pepper on a pro bono volunteer basis on Sirhan's behalf for more than four years and more recently with Berry also. This editor also has submitted multiple comments about the case to civic groups and the reader comment sections of Jackman's recent coverage for the Washington Post.

We have emphasized repeatedly that, contrary to most reader comments, considerable doubt exists whether Sirhan fired the fatal shots. Also, we have noted that the parole board's focus is largely on current considerations. The defense has been barred from obtaining evidentiary hearings.

Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, (shown above in a graphic prepared by our project five years ago), has followed the case closely since Los Angeles Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi called him after the killing to seek his continuing counsel. Wecht phoned the Justice Integrity Project on Aug. 26 to share his view that the forensic problems with the RFK prosecution were even more obvious than in the John F. Kennedy Assassination, which he has also studied and written about extensively.

This editor posted a ccomment on the Washington Post website of a story published yesterday, as follows, in response to many comments by readers who thought they knew the evidence and that it proved that Sirhan killed RFK.

I owe it to one of America's greatest civic heroes -- who just phoned me about this story -- to try to respond once more to these reader comments. Nearly everyone seems eager for vengeance against Sirhan but unaware of key facts.

My caller was Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., now age 90, the famed forensic pathologist based in Pittsburgh, where he was county coroner for 20 years. He was longtime chair of county's Democratic Party, a medical school professor, a strong supporter of his region's Jewish community, and a Democratic Party nominee for the U.S. senate, among other civic projects. He authored or co-authored about 60 books, including textbooks, and still performs hundreds of autopsies a year (500 last time I checked two years ago).

Most relevantly, he has lived with this case since Los Angeles County Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi called on him as trusted advisor during the RFK autopsy. Dr. Wecht was an official consultant also on the JFK death.

On a forensic and other scientific basis, he told me this evening, the disturbing problems with the case against Sirhan exceed even those in the JFK murder. He listed many examples. They include evidence of 12 to 14 shots fired when Sirhan's gun could hold just eight, and evidence that RFK had been shot from a distance of between 1 and 1.5 inches from the rear. All of this is detailed in documents, books and other materials for anyone willing to learn.

The stakes, Dr. Wecht continued, go far beyond this defendant's fate. Unlike most commenters here, his focus is not vengeance. Instead, in the RFK spirit, he cares about the integrity of the U.S. justice and democratic institutions -- and fears that if they continue to fail in this case the dangers fester.

This is not an abstraction. Those like Dr. Wecht who perform independent autopsies are the front line in holding police and prosecutors accountable for accurate reports in everyday cases. This hero has called out gross misconduct many times and paid the price.

Additional coverage is shown below. This includes a link to our Readers Guide To RFK Assassination: Books, Videos, Archives, which presents key books, videos, documents, websites and other archives most relevant to his career and murder. The materials include both those affirming and those questioning whether Sirhan fired the fatal shots.